A week in the life of a koi farmer (wc 7_11)

A quick update on goings on at the farm this week.

All the growing on tanks are full, and the fish growing. It’s full steam ahead for next spring! We’re already up to speed with the Kohaku and Doitsu Ochiba quality coming through but I’m seeing some real potential in the Aka Matsuba’s too which also caught the eye of a group of visitors over the weekend. They could be one to watch this spring. At the next round of selections in a few weeks I’ll grab some footage of them. The 2022 Showa’s off our MGS line are also now starting to reach a size where we can read their future potential more clearly and this is also one to review in detail in a few weeks time.

The Mukashi Ogons we spawned off our massive female we call Opaline are now starting to show their credentials. We’ve selected them down to the best few and these are growing on to tosai and beyond and have that same musculature along the back that mum has. She was 96cm at the last measure up in early summer just after spawning. And it looks like her volumous frame has been passed on to the off spring. We are well known for our Mukashi’s, and the hope here is that we can improve on this variety further with the Opaline line.

In the bowl so far this week… quite a wide range of koi! These Shiro Utsuri’s made a great impression.

For video footage of these Shiro Utsuri's, and clips from around the farm this week, please see this minute long video montage:

Looking ahead, whilst we get some respite in the off season, there’s a long list of to do’s that we kept adding to during the summer and all of a sudden, the few winter month’s remaining doesn’t seem long enough to get through them all! Plus planning for next season is well underway too.